1. Field of the Invention
This invention pertains in general to computer security and in particular to efficiently implementing security checks of streamed applications.
2. Description of the Related Art
Application streaming is emerging as a useful way to execute applications and has benefits not provided by traditional application execution approaches. Specifically, application streaming permits execution of an application that has not been installed or stored locally on the client system on which it executes, providing application code and data to the client as needed, one block at a time. This provides a number of benefits, such as saving disk space that would otherwise be required on the client machine for storing the entire application, allowing centralized licensing control and simplified ability to patch and update applications, and allowing execution of the application to begin without requiring all the code to be first downloaded.
However, application streaming currently does not always integrate smoothly with existing systems. In particular, the use of security systems such as malware scanning software currently can negate the benefits of application streaming. Specifically, conventional malware scanning technology sometimes cannot detect the presence of malware based on a single block of the application, taken separately from the rest of the application. Thus, conventional malware scanning software halts the execution of the streamed application until the entire application has been downloaded, scans the application as a whole, and only then permits the application to execute. This eliminates the beneficial ability of application streaming to execute an application of which only a portion is actually present on the client machine.